"Okay, baby," I say, breathing in. "Top fee for a DJ on a Thursday night in Manhattan is five hundred but since we're in a bind and according to all my g*y friends you're the hippest thing since Astrolube and we need you badly we'll up it to five-forty."
"Thank you, Mr. Johnson-excuse me, Mr. Ward-but I'm not a DJ."
"I know, I know. I meant music designer."
"No, I'm afraid I'm not that either, Mr. Ward."
"Well, uh, like who are you then and why am I sitting across from you in a booth in Fashion Cafe?"
"I've been trying to get ahold of you for weeks," he says.
"You've been trying to get ahold of me?" I ask. "You've been trying to get ahold of me? My answering machine's not really happening this week, I guess." I pause. "Do you have any pot?"
Palakon scans the room, then looks slowly back at me. "No. I do not."
"So what's the story, morning glory?" I'm staring at the remake of La Femme Nikita on one of the video monitors hanging near the Arc de Triomphe. "You know, Palakon, you really got that whole very well dressed educated rich junkie thing going on, man. If you don't have it"-I shrug helplessly-"well, my man, you might as well be sucking up a soft-serve cone in an Idaho Dairy Queen in between painting barn silos, huh?"
Palakon just stares across the table at me. I offer him a cinnamon toothpick.
"Did you attend Camden College in New Hampshire during the years 82 to, ah, 1988?" Palakon asks gently.
Staring back at him, I blankly answer, "I took half a year off." Pause. "Actually four of them."
"Was the first one in the fall of 1985?" Palakon asks.
"Could've been." I shrug.
"Did you know a Jamie Fields while attending Camden College?"
I sigh, slap my hands on the table. "Listen, unless you have a photo-no dice, my man."
"Yes, Mr. Ward," Palakon says, reaching for a folder sitting next to him. "I happen to have photos."
Palakon offers me the folder. I don't take it. He coughs politely and sets it on the table in front of me. I open the folder.
The first set of shots are of a girl who looks like a cross between Patricia Hartman and Leilani Bishop and she's walking down a runway, the letters DKNY vaguely legible in the background, photos of her with Naomi Campbell, one with Niki Taylor, another of her drinking martinis with Liz Tilberis, various shots of her lounging on a couch in what looks like a studio at Industria, two of her walking a small dog in the West Village and one, which looks as if it was taken with a telephoto lens, of her moving along the commons at Camden, heading toward the rim of that lawn before it drops offinto the valley below, nicknamed End of the World by students suffering from vertigo.
The second set of shots abruptly place her in front of the Burlington Arcade in London, on Greek Street in Soho, in front of the American Airlines terminal at Heathrow. The third set I come across is a pictorial. I'm in with her and Michael Bergin and Markus Schenkenberg, where we're modeling '60's-inspired swimwear. I'm about to jump into a pool wearing white trousers and a Nautica tank top and she's looking at me darkly in the background; the three of us are fooling around with hula hoops; another has us dancing on a patio; in one I'm on a raft in the pool, spitting out an arc of water while she bends down at water's edge motioning for me to come closer. Since I do not remember this shoot at all, I start to close the folder, unable to look at any more photos. My first reaction is: that's not me.
"Does this help your memory?" Palakon asks.
"Whoa, pre-tattoo," I sigh, noticing my bicep curled around Michael's neck before I close the folder. "Jesus, that must've been the year everyone wore Levi's with ripped knees."
"It, um, may have been," Palakon says, sounding confused.
"Is this the girl who signed me up for Feminists for Animal Rights?" I ask. "FAR?"
"Um... um..." Palakon flips through his file. "She was a"-he squints at a sheet of paper-"a pot activist. Does that help?"
"Not enough, baby." I open the folder again. "Is this the girl I met at Spiros Niarchos's fortieth-birthday party?"
"No."
"How do you know?"
"We-I-know that you did not meet Jamie Fields at Spiros Niarchos's fortieth-birthday party." Palakon closes his eyes, squeezing the bridge of his nose. "Please, Mr. Ward."
I just stare at him. I decide to try another tactic. I lean in to Palakon, which causes him to lean toward me hopefully.